Manager, Project Management Office
Australian Technology Park, Sydney

After studying Mechanical Engineering at Oxford Brookes University in the United Kingdom, Mr Hicks joined Oxford Instruments, a large manufacturer of scientific research instruments.

During his 12 years at Oxford Instruments he had numerous roles including: R&D engineering, worldwide service support, technical marketing and finally, technical sales.

His time at Oxford Instruments included two years in Japan where he looked after the NMR division including providing support to the company’s OEM’s in the region.

It was with Oxford Instruments that Mr Hicks moved to Sydney in 1997 to manage their research instruments activities in Australia and the emerging markets of South-East Asia.

In 2000 he became the Operations Manager for The Centre for Quantum Computer Technology, an Australian Research Council-funded Centre of Excellence, based at the University of New South Wales. Duties included managing the Centre’s finances and grants, looking after recruitment, coordinating reporting requirements and managing facilities issues.

In January 2003, Mr Hicks became one of NICTA’s first employees, joining as NSW Operations Manager. In the early days of NICTA initial responsibilities were varied and mostly revolved around establishing and implementing processes to enable NICTA to operate as an organisation.

In July 2005, Gavin became the Manager of NICTA’s newly established Project Management Office (PMO). With NICTA maturing as an organisation, projects were playing an increasing role in focussing the research agenda. The role of the PMO is to provide a coordinated and consistent approach to managing projects across NICTA as well as to maintain an enterprise-wide project management system and to act as a central repository for all information relating to NICTA’s research activities.